

His purist-folkie fans could not believe it – that their idol had broken trust with them, broken all the rules and sided with those impure and juvenile rock and rollers. The first and perhaps most famous of these escapes was in the mid-sixties when he traded in his Martin acoustic guitar for a Fender Stratocaster, turned it up to eleven, and blasted electric blues at the Monterey Pop Festival. Dylan has spent his six decades in the public eye doing everything possible to stay out of every category that the world has tried to put him in. For example, we are “in the world, but not of the world,” and we say of Christ that He is “fully man and fully God.”īut whether you call the first sentence in this book ironic or paradoxical, anyone who knows anything about Dylan would have to say this about it: it is a huge understatement. Something seemingly contradictory, but finally not so demanding closer scrutiny and holding within its apparent mystery some deeper truth that we might never have gotten to any other way. Maybe a better word is “paradoxical.” We Christians know that one quite well. Isn’t it ironic then, that the first sentence in the preface to the book is this one: “Bob Dylan will not be labelled.” Pages and pages of words, more than a hundred footnotes, all with the aim of discovering whether Dylan is (still) a Christian or not. This book purportedly sets out to tell us where Bob Dylan is spiritually.
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"This is what I was put on earth to do.”Īnd can you teach me how to dance, real slow? “I’ve had a God-given sense of destiny," said Dylan in 2001. The evidence abounds and Dylan's friends and fans provide a plethora of insight into this veritable music icon's spiritual side. Today, there is not a Dylan book in existence that exclusively focuses on his spiritual odyssey through years of research and original interviews with those who know him and his journey well, such as Barry Beckett, Arthur Blessit, T-Bone Burnett, Carolyn Dennis, Dave Kelly, Regina McCrary, Maria Muldaur, Scott Ross, Jerry Wexler, and Paul Wasserman. It offers readers an informative, entertaining, and nuanced look into Bob Dylan’s spiritual odyssey. "What does stick is his music, in part because his songs contain a deep, abiding spirituality that moves listeners like me more than the songs of any other artist."īob Dylan: A Spiritual Life bridges the gap between purpose and meaning in grand fashion. "Call Dylan whatever you want, but the name won’t stick," said foreword writer and film director Scott Derrickson.

Tracking an American original-from his Jewish roots to his controversial embrace of Jesus to his enduring legacy as the composer of the Tempest album-Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life delivers the story of a man in dogged pursuit of redemption.īased on years of research and original interviews, this book sorts through the myths and misunderstandings and reveals Dylan to be both traditional and radical in the way he expresses his spiritual quest for purpose and meaning. Never before has a book like this one delved into the spiritual odyssey of cultural icon Bob Dylan.
